Commentary | Inside the Hall | Indiana Hoosiers Basketball News, Recruiting and Analysis

The Inside the Hall Mailbag: May 14

by Alex Bozich in Commentary | May 14th, 2013

The Inside the Hall Mailbag is a collection of questions tweeted to us via Twitter (@insidethehall) and sent to us via our Facebook page. Submit your questions and we’ll answer as many as we can.

@HopslamHoosier writes: how much should we take vonleh’s four year player comments with a grain of salt? Or should we?

I’m not surprised by his comments. (You can read them here.) Crean has said several times that while he’s not opposed to recruiting one-and-done players, he’s also not looking for players who won’t unpack their bags in Bloomington. It seems like Noah is coming into the situation with the attitude that he’ll be in college until he’s fully prepared to take the next step in his career. In other words, he’s not viewing IU as a quick pit stop to the NBA. That’s the attitude Crean covets when recruiting the top players.

Cody Zeller came to Bloomington with a similar attitude of staying for four years, but ended up leaving early because he was prepared to do so. I see the Vonleh situation in a comparable light. He’s coming to college to be a student athlete, to win games and get better. If he has the opportunity to leave early and he feels he’s ready, I think that’s what he’ll do. And who could blame him if that’s what happens? But to answer your question, I believe he’s genuine in his comments. – Alex Bozich

@mattyork1941 writes: how is austin etherington’s rehab progressing? Will he be ready and have a significant role next year?

It sounds like Etherington is on track to be healthy for next season. Here’s the latest from Tom Crean from a little more than a week ago: “Austin Etherington continues to make strides with his knee rehab, strength and jump shot,” Crean tweeted. “His shooting was very impressive last Friday.”

As for the role Etherington will play, I’m not sure I foresee him taking on a significant role. That’s not to say he can’t find his niche as a perimeter shooter, but he’ll have stiff competition for perimeter minutes with guys like Will Sheehey, Jeremy Hollowell, Stanford Robinson, Troy Williams and Collin Hartman all vying for time. — Alex Bozich

@RealAdamJ writes: What impact do you expect from Perea and Jurkin next year? How big is another summer of conditioning for these guys?

Hanner Mosquera-Perea has been impressive in workouts this spring and the biggest thing for him this offseason is getting in the gym and taking on that 365 day a year mentality that Crean frequently references. If that happens, there’s no reason to believe that Mosquera-Perea won’t be a rotation guy next season. He has the talent and athleticism to do so. The suspension last season was a significant setback for him because he lost valuable time against several of IU’s early non-conference opponents.

As for Jurkin, his foot injury hampered him throughout Big Ten season and if he is to contribute next season, getting healthy is the first thing on the checklist. — Alex Bozich

@MShlyank writes: how realistic is it to repeat as Big 10 champs?

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Tags: Twitter Mailbag

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Is Indiana a top 25 team heading into next season?

by Alex Bozich in Commentary | May 1st, 2013

A year ago, Indiana was a consensus top three team in most of the early rankings for the 2012-2013 season.

The decisions of Christian Watford and Cody Zeller to return to school coupled with other returnees like Jordan Hulls, Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey and a talented recruiting class made the Hoosiers a popular pick to rise to the top of the polls and compete for a national championship.

The outlook isn’t quite as optimistic for 2013-2014 as Zeller and Oladipo have declared for the NBA Draft, Hulls and Watford have graduated and as a result, Indiana will be one of the nation’s youngest teams with just two true upperclassmen in Sheehey and Austin Etherington.

With the passing of the NBA Draft early entry deadline, preseason top 25 polls are beginning to trickle out and despite significant departures from a Big Ten championship team, Indiana is included in most of them. The most bullish prognostications come from NBC Sports, which has IU at No. 15 and ESPN.com’s Jason King:

20. Indiana Hoosiers: This Hoosiers team won’t be anywhere near as good as the unit that won last season’s Big Ten title while spending a large chunk of the season ranked No. 1 in The Associated Press poll. But that doesn’t mean Indiana won’t be salty in 2013-14. Point guard Yogi Ferrell (4.1 assists) is the lone returning starter after Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo entered the NBA draft, but forward Will Sheehey earned valuable minutes off the bench, and coach Tom Crean couldn’t be more excited about the progress of freshman forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea.

The X-factor will be how quickly Indiana’s highly touted, six-man signing class adapts to the college game. Headlining the group is Noah Vonleh, who is rated third among power forwards in the country by ESPN.com.

CBS Sports slots Indiana in at No. 24 while Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated has the Hoosiers at No. 25.

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Tags: 2013-2014 season preview

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Breaking down the IU career, departure of Maurice Creek

by Justin Albers in Commentary | April 24th, 2013

IUCCSITH0011 Everybody has their own opinion on Maurice Creek, and that’s fine. But it’s impossible to talk about his career at Indiana without using the word “unfair” or without discussing what could have been.

In reality, Creek helped the Hoosiers very little on the court after his first year and half with the Hoosiers. It wasn’t his fault and he did everything he could to contribute, but his body never could hold up long enough for him to make any real impact.

It’s not like he didn’t want it bad enough or didn’t work to have success. If you spent any amount of time around the Indiana campus over the last four years, you likely witnessed Creek’s love for the game of basketball. He regularly carried a ball with him when he walked around campus, and he spent considerable time shooting around at the HPER and SRSC facilities during the team’s offseason.

Creek loves the game. The game just hasn’t always loved him back.

It’s unfortunate, too, considering the talented player we’re talking about. Some people forget how good Creek was as a freshman, when he scored 31 points on a highly-ranked Kentucky team that consisted of a backcourt of John Wall and Eric Bledsoe.

He averaged 16.4 points per game that season, shooting 53 percent from the field and 45 percent from beyond the arc. And that came on a team that won only 10 games.

He was a likely on-and-done talent, maybe two-and-done. He should be playing in his second or third NBA season right now. Instead, he’s trying to find another school where he can use his last year of eligibility and begin working on a graduate degree.

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Tags: Maurice Creek

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That’s A Wrap: Defense

by Ryan Corazza in Commentary | April 23rd, 2013

Welcome to “That’s A Wrap,” our recap of the 2012-2013 Indiana Hoosiers. Today, the final installment: Indiana’s defense.

Final stats (36 games): 62.1 ppg, 43.2 FG %, 44.0 eFG %, 30.4 3P FG%, 27.0 % FTR.

As the 2011-12 college hoops season wrapped and many national pundits ranked the Hoosiers No. 1 heading into this past season — a ranking that eventually carried over to the official AP preseason Top 25 — there was one black mark on Indiana’s resumé: its defense.

“Indiana may well be the proper pick as the best team in the land, but I think if you locked people in a room in late March and made each individual figure it out on his or her own, it wouldn’t have been nearly as obvious that a team with a suspect defense last season should be the best team in the land this season, and at least a few people would have struggled to put them in the top five,” wrote Stats Lord Ken Pomeroy in late October.

ESPN’s Blog Star Eamonn Brennan on the same day: “As the Hoosiers themselves will readily admit, they were not a good defensive team last season. It is rare for a team with a defense so mediocre — they finished ranked No. 64 in adjusted defensive efficiency — to seriously contend for a national title the next season.”

All true and fair. But Indiana quickly shed such a reputation once the ball tipped on the season. It would finish the year No. 13 in adjusted defensive efficiency and show tremendous improvement across the board. The biggest change? Its communication and commitment to team defense. They understood when to switch, when to rotate, when to help and when to stay home. They held each other accountable. They realized good defense could turn into a quick transition bucket, that a turnover or long rebound often meant a dunk or 3-pointer on the other end.

The numbers bear it out. Where Indiana in seasons past struggled to defend the 3-point line — remember games like this or this or this? — they held opponents to a 30.4 percent mark from distance in 2012-2013, 30th best in the nation. An opponent 2-point percentage mark of 43.2 (No. 32) and eFG percentage of 44.0 (No. 15) also had them among the top teams in the nation.

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Tags: Christian Watford, Cody Zeller, Remy Abell, Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehey

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That’s A Wrap: Offense

by Alex Bozich in Commentary | April 22nd, 2013

Welcome to “That’s A Wrap,” our recap of the 2012-2013 Indiana Hoosiers. Today: Indiana’s offense.

Final stats (36 games): 78.6 ppg, 48.2 FG %, 54.8 eFG %, 40.3 3P FG%, 74.3 FT %, 45.9 % FTR.

Indiana’s offense was once again elite in 2012-2013, and paired with a much improved defense that wasn’t present in 2011-2012, the Hoosiers spent a majority of the regular season ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press top 25 poll.

Despite a tough last month in which it scored just 1.03 points per possession, Indiana finished the season with the nation’s second best offense at 1.21 points per trip. That was up slightly over last season when IU finished at 1.206.

The improvement was a bit more defined in Big Ten play where IU scored 1.136 points per possession compared to 1.112 last season.

Once again, the efficiency was led by Cody Zeller’s presence in the middle, getting to the foul line and IU’s ability to find shooters on the perimeter. Zeller’s biggest impact was in getting to the foul line, where he posted a free throw rate (FTA/FGA) of 73.2. Indiana shot 904 free throws and made 672 of those attempts compared to 563 attempted for its opponents. Offensive rebounding was a big area of improvement this season as Indiana rose from 59th nationally in on the offensive glass all the way up to seventh. Both Zeller and Victor Oladipo ranked in the top seven in the Big Ten in offensive rebounding.

The 3-point shooting percentage was down from last season, but was still fourth best nationally with four guys — Jordan Hulls, Christian Watford, Oladipo and Remy Abell — finishing at better than 40 percent. After shooting better than 41.2 percent in each month from November through February, the Hoosiers managed just 31.5 percent from behind the arc in March, which was a big reason the offense sputtered down the stretch.

The offense was again incredibly balanced with five guys scoring 9.5 points per game or more and a sixth, Yogi Ferrell, averaging 7.6. The two biggest movers year-over-year were Oladipo and Watford. After an up-and-down sophomore season, Oladipo put it all together as a junior and finished seventh nationally in effective field goal percentage (64.8). Watford shot a ridiculous 48.4 percent on threes, which was up nearly five percent from his junior season and almost 17 percent from where he finished as a freshman.

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Tags: Christian Watford, Cody Zeller, Victor Oladipo

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That’s A Wrap: Tom Crean

by Justin Albers in Commentary | April 18th, 2013

Welcome to “That’s A Wrap,” our recap of the 2012-2013 Indiana Hoosiers. Today: Head coach Tom Crean.

Tom Crean knew the Indiana job would be a challenge when he accepted it some five years ago. He had to rebuild the program from the very bottom, and he successfully restored it to a place where the Hoosiers could be the No. 1 ranked team in the preseason.

What Crean has accomplished has been truly remarkable and praiseworthy. But the difficulty of the head job in Bloomington didn’t end when Crean got the top recruits to start coming to town or when he built a team that earned a No. 1 seed this season. Crean dealt with a number of different challenges this season.

The most difficult one was expectations. The Hoosiers had plenty of them this season, and they sometimes struggled to handle and live up to those lofty expectations. They were expected to win, and when their season ended early with a Sweet Sixteen loss to Syracuse in Washington D.C., it was viewed by some as a disappointment.

Indiana accomplished some great things this season. It won a Big Ten title outright for the first time in 20 years. Beat Michigan twice. Beat Michigan State twice. Won at Ohio State. Earned a No. 1 seed. Reached the Sweet Sixteen for the second consecutive year. But the Hoosiers didn’t win it all, and when you play or coach at a school that has hung five banners, championships become the standard to which you are held.

In some ways, Crean handled the expectations well. He did numerous national radio and television interviews in which he was charismatic and engaging. He continued to develop his players throughout the season and constantly reminded the media that the team hadn’t accomplished anything because of its preseason ranking.

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Tags: Tom Crean

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That’s A Wrap: Christian Watford

by Ryan Corazza in Commentary | April 17th, 2013

Welcome to “That’s A Wrap,” our player-by-player recap of the 2012-2013 Indiana Hoosiers. Today: Christian Watford.

Watford (36 games): 12.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 2.4 rebounds, 0.9 assists, 43.2% FG, 48.4% 3PFG, 81.1% FT in 27.9 minutes per game.

They said Christian Watford, for all his talent and scoring ability, despite the biggest shot in Indiana hoops in some time, was too inconsistent.

Watford would disappear when he was needed — missing shot after shot during Big Ten games. His effort waxed and waned like the moon.

But in his final season in the cream and crimson, Watford shed that reputation. It didn’t start that way. He had trouble fitting into the Hoosiers’ uptempo transition style. Against North Carolina in Bloomington — perhaps the most dominant, entertaining performance by Indiana all year — Watford decided to play outside the team construct and hunt for shots. He had a dunk that looked nice, but it would be the only shot he’d make all evening (1-of-9).

Play like this simply wasn’t going to fly.

Slowly, Watford found that conforming to the construct of IU’s efficient offense had its benefits. He wouldn’t be the one scoring at the rim in transition. He wouldn’t be the one bringing the ball up the court, either. But Watford’s trailer 3-pointer off the left wing was deadly. If we scratch Remy Abell’s 48.5 percent mark which came on just 33 attempts, Watford led the team in 3-point percentage (48.4 percent on 125 attempts). And for a team that made it a point to get to the line often, Watford would use his ability on the block to get the charity stripe (a team-high 81.1 percent mark) or score otherwise if the foul didn’t come. (Though, he wouldn’t always find success there. His shot fell 55 percent of the time at the rim, tied with Yogi Ferrell for worst among IU’s rotation players.)

As the Big Ten season rolled along, Watford’s numbers were a model of consistency. Not only did he score in double-digits in 17 of the 20 games, but he was strong on the boards as well, tallying eight or more rebounds on seven occasions.

Rebounding like that doesn’t come without consistent effort. Watford was finally bringing it game in and game out. He also hit one of the biggest shots of the season, a runner and-1 in the lane against Michigan State up in East Lansing that helped the Hoosiers win there for the first time in 22 years.

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Tags: Christian Watford

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